


The Romantic Hero Type

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [6]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, History geekery, Literature Geekery, Snippet FIc, The one where Aramis and Milady are girlfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5077627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"You were a soldier, once."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Romantic Hero Type

Aramis set his hands to the lady's waist and swung, setting her in a shadowed doorway. Her back met the wooden door with a bump, and he steadied her. She turned her face up and he smelt a hint of rose pastilles as she looked over his shoulder, eyes mischievous as a kitten's, at a group of city watchmen marching down the street, their lanterns bobbing like small bright fish in the dark waters of the night. Her left hand reached behind her, coaxing open the door lock with a scrap of bent wire. One more twist and it clicked. She worked the latch and the door swung; she fell into the blackness. Aramis followed.

Inside was the front room of a bookseller's - the air was rich with the scents of new ink and dusty paper. "'Lagorio e Fratelli' she murmured, shutting the door behind them, "purveyors of all things printed, including histories, horror tales, horticulture, cheap reprints of chivalric romances, and the odd picaresque farce, none of which is relevant to our immediate situation. They recently picked up a contract with some military men, a contract of interest to me.

"The brothers are off on a tear, and the handsome apprentice seems to have found better pickings elsewhere in Mezzina. I have information the sister sleeps on the third floor." She smiled. "It's a good night for poking around the back room."

"What are we stealing this time?" 

"We're not," she said, unhooking a tiny hooded candle lantern from a fold of her dark blue skirts and lifting a shutter so that the mirrors inside threw the light ahead of her in a small circle. Limping slightly, she led them through trestle tables laid by, and high stacks of sleeping books, ready to be taken out to the open air market. Aramis ran a curious finger over a reprint of Boccaccio's hundred tales, the ink already flaking on the Italian of the title page. The lady continued on through a small door into an artisan's studio. 

There was an enormous desk where lay a map drawn in swirling lines and careful Spanish legends, of an innocuous piece of countryside with the roads clearly marked, ready to be copied in etching to a wax-covered block for printing. Pinned to the corkboard wall were a score more like it.

"All in draft," she said cheerfully, "truly, I have the devil's luck." 

"You make a lot of it, I've noticed."

She rocked on her heels, visibly pleased, then picked up a fine-tipped stick of charcoal and bent over the map. She erased a crossroads with delicate swipes of her fingernail, and redrew the roads to trail into marshy ground. Then she gestured to the top right. "You were a soldier, once. Where's the most frustrating place to lose a mule-train around these hills?" He blinked, and then looked more closely at the winding tracks and empty-bellied corries. "Here," he said, pointing. "Difficult to turn on the narrow paths and going forward would send them into a maze." She nodded thoughtfully, licked the tip of her charcoal, and made two tiny adjustments.

"This doesn't seem like your usual style," he said, watching her turn to the maps on the wall.

"No secret documents, lost seals, or importunate gentlemen losing their britches? Not all my narratives are high drama. This is more... horticulture." She eyed him sideways, "And you, dear Aramis? Are you the romantic hero type or a picaroon?"

He shrugged. "I am a walk-on player. Give me a hat and I shall wear it for you."

"Pff," she said, but went on to explain: "There was a grey gentleman of my acquaintance, a most pious fellow. While I could not truly consider myself one of his _intimates_ , I was on occasion privy to remarks regarding certain eventualities. Spain going to war with France, for example.

"Will we be meeting him?" 

"Oh, he's dead." 

"Did you kill him?" 

She threw him a sideways, rancorous look. "Why do they always ask me that?"

He lobbed back an apologetic smile, and she continued: "Armies march on their stomachs and drink gold like my husband quaffs wine. Spain already stretches its supply lines in its quarrels with the Dutch, and a little confusion down the Spanish Road goes a long, long way. Imagine a fighting man, fierce, quick, brandishing a weapon in each hand against his foes. He is strong as a bull, and yet he cannot... quite... breathe. What then?"

"He might withdraw," said Aramis quietly, "or he might fall." He moved a step stool that she might reach higher. "Or he might rally. Desperation, rage, are not to be dismissed lightly."

Her teeth glinted in the darkness. "I've a few other snares for the tripping."

"I thought you worked for the English," he said. "How much are you paid for this?"

"I nest in many dovecotes," she said cheerfully. "That's the way - never depend on any one patron. But this? To send troops - armies - marching with a flick of my fingers? To subjugate a war?" Her hands moved, miming the moving cross of a marionette, and she shivered. "This is actually for free," she admitted.

"I won't tell," he murmured, and she reached down to ruffle his hair which he tolerated, briefly.

"I should probably be more bothered by this," he added, passing over the legend of a freshwater spring to redraw a tangle of roads nearby.

"You could set yourself at a crossroads and cut them down one by one instead? That would be nice and bloody, I imagine, like a knight in a chivalric romance. You could have a heroic last stand surrounded by an army, and fall back against a tree sighing your last breath. So very pretty."

"I don't believe you take this seriously."

"Believe me, I have cause to take the supposed honour of a fighting man very seriously indeed."

A door opened, probably at the front of the shop, and then slammed. They did not waste time freezing in shock - instead the lady shuttered her lantern as Aramis lifted her down and they melted into the shadows of the cartographer's studio.

Footsteps. A humble flicker of candlelight. A glimpse of white as a maiden clad only in her nightgown and wild straggles of auburn hair moved through the building, clasping a bundle wrapped in cloth, dropping clots of earth behind her.

 _I have to know,_ mouthed Aramis, and followed after her silently, the dark of his clothes blending in with the shadows. His colleague in crime rolled her eyes, but followed.

The girl found a stopping point in the kitchen, at the wide scrubbed table, where rested a large round pot of a handsome indigo shade - its belly was empty, for now. Beside it rested a basil plant pulled out by the roots, and the woman had her bundle on the table, unwrapping it with shaking hands. The warmth of the candle light did nothing to soften the harsh lines of the girl's face, and the tragedy of her expression changed not at all as the cloth fell away to show the head of a young man with a fine straight nose and curly hair. She lifted it, kissed its forehead gently, and placed it in the pot, covering it with the basil plant and shoving in more earth with savage fingers.

Aramis drew breath to speak.

 _Don't get involved!_ his companion mouthed in the shadows.

He placed one hand on his breast and raised his eyebrows. _Who, I?_

_Damn it, Aramis..._

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes being in a chivalric romance means fidelity, infidelity, famous last stands, going mad in the woods for a while, or helping random distressed maidens. And sometimes it means shlepping around with a sorceress/priestess of dubious morality doing odd jobs. This is really true.
> 
> A picaresque tale is an episodic story centred on a good-natured rogue's improbable adventures, generally written for comedy and sometimes satirical. A 'picaroon' is the good-natured rogue in question (and apparently the word originally meant 'pirate', how 'bout that?)
> 
>  _the Spanish Road_ \- the territory down which Spain sent its troops and materiel during its various wars and altercations, picked because it was (relatively) conflict free. Some of the terrain was very bad, however, and maps weren't *cough* very reliable either. I found myself wondering what two people in espionage would actually do during the Franco-Spanish war, and disrupting supply lines is pretty reasonable. (Just try making it sound sexy I dare you it's hard.)
> 
>  _purveyors of all things printed_ \- booksellers often did their own printing in this era; it's not unreasonable to combine related activities into one business; sorry if the mapmaking still feels like a stretch.
> 
>  _lifting a shutter so that the mirrors inside threw the light_ \- this is a bit anachronistic, I think, but hey, _spy stuff_.
> 
> Readers may have recognised my outright theft from the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, Day Five, Story Four: "Lisabetta and the Pot of Basil".


End file.
